Asus eee pc linux mint

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Mint 17 on eee PC 701

Post by fieldstone » Mon Nov 24, 2014 11:01 am

I’m reformatting an old netbook for my parents, and while it works fine under Debian, I’d really prefer to put Mint on it for ease of use.

I downloaded Mint 17 XFCE edition, only to find that I couldn’t install it because the installer wants 7.6 GB of hard drive space. The eee PC 701 only has 4GB of flash storage, but I really thought that would be sufficient for a light version like XFCE or Debian edition.

Before I try the unofficial LXDE version of Mint, does the installation really need 7.6 GB of space or is there a configuration file I can edit to let it install on a 4GB drive?

If it does need all that space, is there a different version I could install that requires less?

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karlchen Level 22
Posts: 17362 Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2011 7:21 am Location: Germany

Re: Mint 17 on eee PC 701

Post by karlchen » Mon Nov 24, 2014 11:27 am

Sorry to say so, but the eee PC 701 is and has always been a toy, not a professional computer. 4 GB flash storage is not enough for current Linux Mint releases, not even for Linux Mint 17 xfce. This is why the system requirements state that the minimum available disk space is 7.6 GB. And even this is ridiculous and not enough. This is just the space needed by the operating system at the time it has been installed. But Mint will fetch updates and need space for them. You will create data and need space for them. You use your computer and will need temporary space in order to do so.
To cut it short, you will have to look for a really small distribution like e.g. Puppy Linux, which is based on Ubuntu, or similar distributions which have been reduced to the max.

The people of Alderaan have been bravely fighting back the clone warriors sent out by the unscrupulous Sith Lord Palpatine for 500 days now.
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Re: Mint 17 on eee PC 701

Post by Zam » Mon Nov 24, 2014 11:26 pm

It worked for me with Xubuntu 12.04.

Having said that, I’ve had no luck with distros based on Ubuntu 14.04 (Xubuntu, Peppermint, etc.) on the EeePC, so am still on 12.04. It appears to be a kernel problem, and so will likely affect Mint 17, 17.1, etc too. If you do get the latest Mint running, do let me know how you did it!

Otherwise, LMDE or SolydX might be viable options?

karlchen Level 22
Posts: 17362 Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2011 7:21 am Location: Germany

Re: Mint 17 on eee PC 701

Post by karlchen » Tue Nov 25, 2014 6:31 am

with respect to the minimum disk space needed for an installation it does not really matter whether you install
+ Ubuntu 12.04.5 — Mint 13, 32-bit both
+ Ubuntu 14.04.1 — Mint 17, 32-bit both
All The named operating systems need more available disk space than the eee PC 701 offers. — This is the reason why I have never bought any of these early netbooks which came without a decent harddisk. Toys. No computers.
Apart from that it might be that K3.2.0-xx will work on eee PC 701, but K3.13.0-xx will not. As there is not enough space to install either of the normal distributions there will only be the chance of choosing a really small distribution like Puppy (based on Ubuntu 12.04 e.g.).
You may fool the installer into accepting a 4 GB flash storage device as being sufficient for the installation. The effect will simply be that you will run out of disk space on the root filesystem within the near future. Does not make much sense, does it.
A toy is a toy and will remain a toy. Toys do not fulfil the minimal system requirements of any recent and supported distribution, be it Ubuntu or be it Linux Mint.
Yet, in the end this is your decision, guys. Looking forward to seeing you in the next thread when you ask how to free up disk space on filesystem / which has 0% available disk space left .

The people of Alderaan have been bravely fighting back the clone warriors sent out by the unscrupulous Sith Lord Palpatine for 500 days now.
The Prophet’s Song

jimallyn Level 19
Posts: 9075 Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2014 7:34 pm Location: Wenatchee, WA USA

Re: Mint 17 on eee PC 701

Post by jimallyn » Tue Nov 25, 2014 5:04 pm

Several people I know from another forum are running Crunchbang on their eeepcs. You might give that a try.

“If the government were coming for your TVs and cars, then you’d be upset. But, as it is, they’re only coming for your sons.” — Daniel Berrigan

kyphi Level 9
Posts: 2733 Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2011 1:14 am Location: The Hunter Valley, Australia

Re: Mint 17 on eee PC 701

Post by kyphi » Tue Nov 25, 2014 5:37 pm

The 701 was the first Asus Eee PC and although it was, at the time of release, a little marvel, its limitations soon became evident. Later models were an improvement but still never managed to become serious contenders to more powerful and versatile portable computers.

Even the 1000H Eee PC is unable to run Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon in a satisfactory manner unless you are willing to accept a rather sluggish performance. It does manage to run LM 17 with Xfce quite well. The 701 cannot do that.

A 2014 operating system deserves to be run on 2014 technology.

When Linux operating systems came on CDs instead of the current DVD, it was possible to install distros such as EasyPeasy (an Ubuntu variant) on the 701 but those days are gone.

One way to increase the storage capacity of the Eee PC is to use an 8 or 16 GB SD card but there is no way that you can increase its performance. It just does not cut the mustard.

Re: Mint 17 on eee PC 701

Post by Zam » Tue Nov 25, 2014 6:30 pm

karlchen wrote: with respect to the minimum disk space needed for an installation it does not really matter whether you install
+ Ubuntu 12.04.5 — Mint 13, 32-bit both
+ Ubuntu 14.04.1 — Mint 17, 32-bit both
All The named operating systems need more available disk space than the eee PC 701 offers. — This is the reason why I have never bought any of these early netbooks which came without a decent harddisk. Toys. No computers.
Apart from that it might be that K3.2.0-xx will work on eee PC 701, but K3.13.0-xx will not. As there is not enough space to install either of the normal distributions there will only be the chance of choosing a really small distribution like Puppy (based on Ubuntu 12.04 e.g.).
You may fool the installer into accepting a 4 GB flash storage device as being sufficient for the installation. The effect will simply be that you will run out of disk space on the root filesystem within the near future [. ]

I haven’t experienced space problems with Xubuntu 12.04. Space isn’t an issue if you don’t install much else, and store all your files in the cloud anyway. You can also delete some programs you don’t need, like GIMP, if you need more space.

Peppermint OS is probably ideal for the little EeePC. It has all of the Mint tools, uses the Mint software center, but has hardly any extra programs installed and uses the LXDE desktop. Peppermint 3 & 4 were great, but 5 (based on 14.04) didn’t work (kernel problem, I think). CrunchBang would be good too.

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Linux Mint on ASUS eeePC?

Post by dkettle » Mon Feb 15, 2016 5:23 pm

I’m looking for a version of Linux that I can run on an old ASUS eeePC with only 2GB of flash memory. I was running Easy Peasy, and it was working, but I can’t update or install a lot of things, because Easy Peasy is no longer being supported, it seems. They haven’t updated the distro in about 5 years, and the main repository is no longer available. So I’m looking for something to replace it, but the latest version of Mint requires 8+ GB of disk space. I tried to install it, but it wouldn’t let me because I only have 2GB.

I just need a bare-bones distro, so I think I should be able to run something, maybe an older release of Mint, or some other distro. I’d like to try Mint, though. Any suggestions?

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Re: Linux Mint on ASUS eeePC?

Post by George Stamford » Mon Feb 15, 2016 6:52 pm

I’d suggest Puppy ‘cos you can run that as a Live CD.

Re: Linux Mint on ASUS eeePC?

Post by Mute Ant » Mon Feb 15, 2016 7:24 pm

900MHz CPU with 1GB RAM and a 2GB storage drive? You can probably get a Mint running on that if you don’t unpack it. a Live Session with a 500MB persistence file will fit in a 2GB drive.

You can get adventurous. A BTRFS root file system can be mounted with compress=zlib option, effectively doubling the storage capacity. Mint still won’t fit.
1.4GB squashfs —[x3]—> 4.2GB plain —[/2]—> 2.1GB BTRFS
. but a CD distribution will.
700MB squashfs —[x3]—> 2.1GB plain —[/2]—> 1.05GB BTRFS
. like Ubuntu Mate (Ubuntu) or Trisquel 7 Mini (FLOSS Ubuntu). I would install it plain as a stand-alone plug-in SD store and transfer it to compressed BTRFS afterwards. Ubiquity doesn’t give you any official chance to remount the target file system

If you leave the Debian+Ubuntu+Mint tribe, by using Puppy for example, a lot of online help will be irrelevant. it just doesn’t work the same way.

[edit] Trisquel is Ubuntu too, sorry.

kyphi Level 9
Posts: 2733 Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2011 1:14 am Location: The Hunter Valley, Australia

Re: Linux Mint on ASUS eeePC?

Post by kyphi » Mon Feb 15, 2016 8:05 pm

Unfortunately you do not state which model eee pc you have.

From the first 701 model there were several improvements in specifications. I had bought a 701 when it was first released (Australia first) but the small screen made it hard to use because you had to use up/down and side to side scrolling. EasyPeasy addressed that.
After that a 900 model was released and later when the 1000H was released I bought one of these. There have been other models since and although the eee pc was discontinued (it could not economically compete with tablets), I have read that production has been resumed.

The 1000H will not run Linux Mint Cinnamon but is quite happy with Linux Mint XFCE.
Current installed version is Linux Mint 15.

I would second George’s suggestion of using Puppy Linux but would install it rather than running as a live CD, especially since the eee pc does not have a CD drive — you can install from a USB stick — unless you have an external CD drive available.

Re: Linux Mint on ASUS eeePC?

Post by dkettle » Tue Feb 16, 2016 3:15 pm

Oops, my mistake. It’s a 701 with 2GB of RAM and an 8GB drive. I checked some older releases of Linux Mint, and according to the posted requirements, I’d have to go back to version 13 (Maya). All later releases supposedly require more than 8GB of drive space. There’s probably a lot of stuff included that I don’t need and would never use (I could delete those packages after installing), but if I can’t install it in the first place (at least not without some technical hacks that are beyond my level of expertise), then it doesn’t help.

I installed Puppy Linux last night, but I’m having a few problems with it. I may try «Maya» if I can’t resolve them.

Thanks to everyone for your help.

Re: Linux Mint on ASUS eeePC?

Post by Bolle1961 » Tue Feb 16, 2016 3:29 pm

There have been other models since and although the eee pc was discontinued (it could not economically compete with tablets), I have read that production has been resumed.

kyphi Level 9
Posts: 2733 Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2011 1:14 am Location: The Hunter Valley, Australia

Re: Linux Mint on ASUS eeePC?

Post by kyphi » Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:54 pm

The problem with removing unwanted programmes is that you have to install them first onto the limited disc space of the 701 model and also that their removal may impact on other programmes because of shared library files.

Please note that the early eee pcs are not capable of running 64 bit systems — 32 bit only and keep in mind that these little computers are basic netbooks and were never designed to be metamorphosed into main work-stations.

Off topic perhaps:
Your question prompted me to upgrade (by new install) my eee pc 1000H to Linux Mint 17.3 Xfce via bootable USB stick which concluded without any problems.

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